Motorcycles, Sushi & One Strange Book

by Nancy N. Rue

  “Then I’ll ask. Are you, like, the most stubborn woman on the face of the earth?”

  “I guess I’m probably in the top twenty percent,” I said.

  Instead of grinning, he seemed to sag. “Did you ever wonder how I got a Harley?”

  Actually I had, and although I had no idea where this was going, I nodded.

  “When Lou was pretty sure I was going to straighten out, he said I could have his old bike in exchange for working here. He taught me how to fix it up.”

  One more reason for him to do absolutely anything for Lou. This wasn’t helping me.

  I started to climb off Levi, but Rocky put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back to the seat. He didn’t let go as his green eyes bored into mine.

  “Just listen to this one thing,” he said, “and then if you still want to dump me, I’ll go.”

  I was too stunned to say anything.

  “I told you that because I know you think I hung out with you because I owe Lou something. I also know you think I hated doing it when I found out you were hyper. But here’s the thing: Lou never asked me to hang out with you. I asked him if you ever had any free time, and after he made me promise not to try anything with you or break your heart or let anything happen to you, he said I could. I knew right away you were a crazy chick, and I knew I loved that about you.”

  Not only could I not speak, I couldn’t move except to try to swallow.

  “So I don’t know why you think you were some kind of job for me. I never did anything to make you think that. And you know what–it’s a total insult to me that you see me as that kind of person.” I saw him try to swallow too. “So, look, if you don’t want to be with me because I come from trash or I’m not your type or whatever, fine. Just tell me. But don’t back off from me because you think I feel sorry for you or something. It’s me I feel sorry for.”

  “Why?” I said in a tiny voice.

  “Because it’s tearing me up that you don’t want to be with me.”

  I shook my head because I didn’t know what else to do. He closed his eyes and dropped his hands from my shoulders and turned away. He was halfway to the garage before I slid off of Levi and went after him. And careened on something and sprawled face-first onto the parking lot.

  Rocky was on me before I could even catch the breath that knocked out of me.

  “Red?” he said. “What the–”

  “Don’t say it,” I said to the grease smear that was now wiped across my face.

  “Say what?”

  “Don’t call me Crash.”

  And then I started to cry. Rocky rolled me onto my back and stared down at me, his eyes gleaming with–no, those had to be my tears I was seeing.

  “I just can’t let anybody get close or they’ll find out who I really am,” I said.

  “I know who you are,” Rocky said.

  “A ditz-queen-airhead-moron?”

  He pulled me up by my shoulders again so that I was sitting up close to his face. Mine, I knew, was blobbed with grease, proving my point–

  “I don’t know any ditz-queen airhead moron,” he said. “I just know Red. Except for one thing.”

  I swiped at my face with the back of my hand. “What?”

  “I don’t know how you feel about me. And I need to.”

  What was I supposed to say? That I thought he was the most amazing guy I’d ever known and I wanted to–

  “Okay, if I asked you to go out with me, what would you say?”

  “I’d say yes. Oh my gosh, I would so say yes, only–”

  The smile he’d begun stuck halfway. “What is so hard about that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He twisted his neck and looked over his shoulder. His face was turning as red as I knew mine already was.

  “That’s like the worst possible answer you could say to me.”

  “No–Rocky–I want to! I just don’t know if I’m allowed to. I mean, my mom doesn’t let me date, but I never asked my–Lou–if I could.”

  Rocky shook his head at me. “As far as I was concerned, that’s what we’ve been doing every day for the past two weeks.”

  He looked beyond me, over my head, and put his hand over my mouth, which I had just opened to answer him.

  “You want to ask permission, go for it,” he said. “Here comes Lou.”

  He kept his hand pressed to my lips, which I thought was pretty brave considering I’d threatened to bite him once.

  Lou came over to us, helmet on his hip, and broke into a full grin. “That’s one way to do it, Rock,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that.” Then he looked at me more closely. “What happened to you, Jess? What are you doing in the middle of the–”

  “She just wants to ask you something,” Rocky said, and pulled his hand away.

  “Okay.” Lou gave my greasy face another look and went back to having what was obviously a very good time. “Ask away, Jess.”

  “I want to know if I’m allowed to go out with Rocky.”

  “I see. Where were you planning to go?”

  I looked blankly at Rocky.

  “To the youth group beach party Saturday,” Rocky said.

  “Ah. Well, I don’t see why not.”

  My face broke open into a smile in spite of me, and in spite of the I-won look on Rocky’s face. Or maybe because of it.

  “Good to know you trust me, Lou,” Rocky said.

  “Of course I trust you.” Lou’s lips twitched in a way I hadn’t seen them do all week. “Especially since I’m going to be there too.”

  I looked at Rocky, but he squinted his eyes at me so hard I didn’t dare say a word. But he still said, “Watch it now, Red. Watch it.”

  His eyes were gleaming at me again.

  I wondered a couple of times between then and Saturday what Chelsea would say about my father chaperoning my first real date. Weezie was even going to be there. She was already whining about not being allowed to wear lip gloss like me.

  Saturday night Rocky pulled up to the house on his motorcycle and came to the door, and I opened it–after Lou put Weezie in a headlock so I could answer it myself. I forgot about what Chelsea would say when Rocky said, “Hey, Red.”

  He gave me the smile. “You ready to be babysat?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  And then I smiled too, right into that fabulous gap. Weezie got away from Lou and squeezed between us in the doorway and hugged Rocky’s leg while I laughed silently in his face. Lou peeled her off and looked out at Rocky’s bike.

  “You’re planning to walk Jess down to the beach, right, Rock?”

  “Yes,” Rocky and I said at the same time.

  “Just wanted to make sure you remembered.”

  “It’s not like she’s an airhead, Daddy,” Weezie said.

  Rocky opened his mouth. I told him to watch it. Weezie rolled her eyes at me.

  It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

  I had never been to a beach party before, but within about five minutes I decided it was my new favorite thing.

  A bunch of kids were bodysurfing. I gave them all a run for their money.

  Four guys had set up a volleyball net and had a game going. I told Rocky I didn’t want to play because I stink at sports where other people expect me to be any good, but he made me get out there anyway and he hit every ball I missed so I didn’t feel like a loser-klutz.

  The three girls who had said hi to me at church–Simone and Emma and Katrina, who introduced herself as “Katrina, and, no, I’m not the hurricane”–dragged me over by the dunes and questioned me about whether Rocky and I were “going out.” I didn’t mind it. It made me not miss Chelsea so much. I really, really didn’t mind it when they said Rocky never had a girlfriend before–and not to think they hadn’t all tried.

  The Reverend Big Shoulders, who everybody called Hank, was there, and before we ate he prayed in a big booming voice I was sure God could hear wherever He was. At the end of it he said, “And all God’s peop
le said–” and everybody yelled, “Amen!” I wanted him to do it again so I could join in. I would know next time.

  Next time. I really wanted there to be a next time.

  We all sat in a circle on the beach and ate cold fried chicken and potato salad and honkin’ chocolate chip cookies. I looked across at Lou and held up my cookie and gave him a question face. He got the sad-happy look on his and gave me a thumbs-up. I ate the entire thing. A lot of things had changed, but my being a sugar-holic wasn’t one of them.

  The water was turning pink by then, and although the air was still warm, Lou built a fire in the center of the circle and everyone moved in closer. Rocky got closer to me than he needed to and picked up my arm and shook it up and down so my hand would flop around. Then he held onto it and didn’t let go. I didn’t pull away. Halfway around the circle, Simone and Emma and Katrina-not-the-hurricane gave me girlfriend smiles.

  “Has everybody greeted our new member?” Hank said. “Jess?”

  “Hi, Jess,” they all said in unison just like the group at the coffee shop that first Sunday.

  “What is that about, anyway?” I whispered to Rocky.

  “Jess wants to know what that’s about,” Rocky said to the entire circle, and probably the people a mile down the beach as well.

  “It’s kind of a joke,” Simone said. She turned to the kid next to her. “You tell it.”

  The kid–a dark-haired guy Chelsea would have been all over like a coat of paint–said, “It’s not exactly a joke. You know about AA, right? Alcoholics Anonymous?”

  I forced myself not to look at Lou.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Whenever somebody new comes to a meeting the person’ll say, ‘I’m So-and-So and I’m an alcoholic.’ And then everybody says, ‘Hi, So-and-So.’ Lou told us about it, and we just started doing it. ”

  “But it doesn’t mean we think you’re an alcoholic,” Simone said, eyes round.

  “I’m not,” I said. “Just so you know.”

  They all laughed.

  “It probably sounds kind of weird to you, though,” Emma said.

  She looked at Lou.

  “It’s okay, Em,” he said. “You can tell Jess.”

  Emma rearranged herself like she was about to give a report. “Okay, well, a lot of us ended up at youth group because we were messed up. I can only speak for myself–but, like, I was into cutting–”

  Simone raised her hand. “Smoking pot.”

  A boy on the other side of the circle said, “I just generally hated everybody.”

  “I, on the other hand, was perfect,” Katrina said, and then ducked as several people threw stuff at her.

  “So anyway,” Emma said, “Lou was just, like, okay, you’re a mess but Jesus can help. So he sort of combined the Bible and the Twelve Step Program and now–I think we’re all gonna make it.”

  I felt the beginnings of a chill. “Twelve-Step Program?”

  Emma looked around the circle. “Somebody else talk.”

  “I will!” Weezie said.

  “No, you won’t,” Lou said.

  She was sitting between his knees, leaning back into his chest. He put his hand playfully over her mouth and grinned at Rocky.

  “Hey–it works,” he said.

  “Okay, I’ll tell,” said the guy who’d said he used to hate everybody. “I’m Travis, by the way. So here’s the deal–when you have some thing that, like, has control over you–drugs, booze, anger–”

  ADHD.

  “–you can’t handle it alone, or you would. So alcoholics who want to recover use the Twelve Step Program that they do with the support of a group, and then they don’t have to be a slave to their addiction.”

  I knew I shouldn’t ask it, but if I didn’t, I knew I would Blurt it anyway, at some moment when it would make me look like a moron. “What are the steps?” I said.

  “Number one is admit you’re powerless over whatever it is–that you’re out of control,” Simone said.

  “Number two,” Travis said, “is believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to wholeness–in our case, that’s Jesus Christ. Number three–”

  “What’s number nine?” I said.

  There was a funky silence around the circle, probably because they’d never heard somebody Blurt like that before. A couple of people counted on their fingers. One of them said, “Make amends to the people you’ve hurt because of your alcoholism or whatever it is.”

  Maybe they backed up to the ones I’d skipped or went on to ten, eleven, and twelve. If they did, I missed it. All I could hear in my head, going round and round on my hamster wheel, was my mother’s voice: He’s just doing this to complete Step Nine. Just like he did with his other kid. But I also heard Rocky telling me, That’s just who he is. It’s like he gets how it is to be a complete screwup, and he doesn’t want it happening to any other kid. And Rose telling me Lou helped Bonsai because he loved him.

  And Lou saying, Weezie does remember that I disappeared from her life for four years…I came back, sober and humbled and ready to be her dad.

  I looked around the circle at the kids who had broken into private conversations as if the group discussion had completely weirded them out. Most of them were projects of Lou’s too. Only they didn’t care because he wasn’t their father, who they were just starting to trust–just beginning to believe that they really mattered to him the way Weezie did–more than they mattered to their mother–or anybody else in the world.

  Hank suddenly had a guitar in his hand and people were calling out songs to him. Across from me, Lou had his arms crossed over Weezie as she snuggled back against him, and they both glowed in the light of the fire like they were one person. Like I would never be with Lou. What if I was just Step Nine like my mother said?

  Nobody was looking at me anymore. I could leave without being noticed–

  “You want to go for a walk?” Rocky whispered.

  I nodded and got up and half ran down the beach. He caught me by the arm until I slowed down.

  “What’s going on, Red?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Yes, I am. See–you do know everything about me.”

  I was running out of breath. Rocky got in front of me and stood there. I folded my arms and looked down at the water lapping over my feet.

  “Where’s all this coming from?” he said. “Five minutes ago you were having a blast.”

  “That was before the whole group told me my mother was probably right. She might be crazy but she isn’t stupid.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I’m not going to tell you because you’ll tell Lou and I don’t want him to know–but I guess it doesn’t matter now if he gets his feelings hurt or not. It’s the truth.”

  “What’s the truth?”

  I dug my toes into the sand.

  “Okay, look, I’m not gonna run to Lou and tell him something you confide in me–unless you’re planning to kill yourself.”

  I jerked my head up. He took that opportunity to put his hands on the sides of my face. I didn’t pull away, because he wasn’t being rough. And all of a sudden, I needed a place to rest my head, because it felt too heavy for my body.

  “No, I’m not going to kill myself,” I said. “That’s my mother’s kind of crazy, not mine.”

  “You can trust me, Red.”

  I wanted to. And I wanted him to tell me I was wrong. So I told him about Mom and Step Nine. And he listened.

  And then he pressed my forehead against his chest and said, “You really are a crazy chick if you believe that–and I don’t think you are and I don’t think you do.”

  “Are you sure?” I said, to the T-shirt that said Kennesaw’s Cycles and smelled like salt air and mocha and all things Rocky.

  He was quiet for a minute–a terrifying minute when I thought he was going to say no and all my hope would be gone.

  “I don’t know how much you know about Jesus,” he sa
id finally, “but Lou is more like him than anybody I ever met. Jesus didn’t use people to make himself feel better and neither does Lou.” Rocky pulled me face-out to look at me. “I bet you never thought I’d be preaching to you, did you?”

  “Do you swear to me that’s true?” I said. “You have to tell me if it’s not, because if it is, then I’m going to tell Lou–”

  I had to stop and swallow. Rocky pressed his hands into my hair.

  “Tell Lou what?”

  “Tell him I never want to go back to live with my mom. That I want to stay here with him forever.”

  Rocky closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around me, hard, and rocked me back and forth. “It’s true, Red,” he said. “It’s true. I swear to you it’s true.”

  I almost let myself cry–but a whistle from down the beach jolted Rocky away from me, hands up like the cops were after him. When I looked up, though, he was grinning. I turned to see Lou, hands at his lips in post-whistle.

  “We’re on our way!” Rocky called to him. To me he said, “Busted.” He grabbed my hand and we ran.

  “The party’s over,” Lou said when we got to him. “Or didn’t you two notice?”

  His lips were twitching. I couldn’t wait to tell him everything.

  Rocky took off on his motorcycle and I watched until I couldn’t see him anymore, and then I told Lou I would stay with Weezie while he took some of the kids home. She was dead asleep before he even carried her into the house and rolled her into her bed.

  I stretched out on mine and smiled at the ceiling. I didn’t know how to be as happy as I was, but I wanted to practice. When my cell phone rang, I was sure it was Rocky and I answered with, “I believe you.”

  “It’s a good thing,” my mother said.

  I came up off the bed like somebody had shot me in the back.

  “Are you packed?” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  Her voice was shrill and it brought back the vampire bats. I tried to think of Rocky, to hear Lou’s voice, even to think of Yeshua.

  “We don’t have time for me to go into detail, Jessie,” she said. “The bottom line is, Lou is trying to take you away from me permanently.”

  “Mom–”

  “Listen to me. You have to leave tonight, as soon as he goes to sleep. Don’t bother to pack. Grandpa can buy you new clothes.”